Archive Results For: Other (Early Modern)
Thomas Cavendish’s Visit to Puná Island in 1587
In 1587 Thomas Cavendish reached Puná Island, Ecuador, where he planned to overhaul his fleet and replenish his supplies. This article describes the visit to the island, the surprise attack by Spanish soldiers and the eventual departure towards Mexico. Most discussions rely only on two English primary sources for Cavendish’s circumnavigation: N. H.’s account in […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Early Modern) | Pacific
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics | Strategy & Diplomacy
Note: The “Henri Grace A Dieu”
Anderson compares three images of the above ship and wonders whether they are the same vessel. One engraving is dated 1523 which means it is much earlier than previously believed. Read More
Filed under: Other (Early Modern) | Other (location)
Subjects include: Art & Music
Etymology of Squiligee and Squeegee
An attempt to define the origin of words both connected to the removal of excess water. It is one of the vagaries of language that sailors should have become seascullions, labouring to remove excess water after swabbing the great bowl of the ship, like the land-bound cooks’ boys washing dishes and scrubbing pots in medieval […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Early Modern) | Other (Eighteenth C) | Other (location)
Subjects include: Manpower & Life at Sea
The Royal Yacht Isabella of 1683: Identification and principal dimensions
The Isabella of 1683 was the last yacht built for Charles II. Although in the past her name has been associated with several images, this yacht has never been fully identified. The process of identification will add detail to a suite of drawings made around 1696 by the seventeenth-century Venetian etcher Vincenzo Coronelli and to a painting […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Early Modern) | Other (location)
Subjects include: Leisure & Small Craft | Shipbuilding & Design
Note: On the First Use of the Term ‘Chronometer’
This brief note records the first usages of the term ‘chronometer’, dating from 1713 in William Derham’s Physico-theology, and Matthias Wasmuth’s Arcanum Navarchicon of 1684. Read More
Filed under: Other (Early Modern) | Other (location)
Subjects include: Science & Exploration
Note: The Wreck of the ‘Apostle’ San Bartolomé (1597)
An examination of the possible sites of the wreck of the post-Armada San Bartolomé and its eventual location at Mundaka Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Other (Early Modern) | Shipwrecks
Subjects include: Navies
Note: On the First Use of the Term “Chronometer’
A discussion of the earliest use of the term ‘chronometer’ as an instrument for keeping time. Read More
Filed under: Other (Early Modern) | Other (Eighteenth C) | Other (location)
Subjects include: Science & Exploration
Note: ‘To Sett Downe All the Villainie’: accounts of the sodomy trial on the fourth East India Company Voyage (1609)
A reconciliation of the accounts of this most unusual trial for sodomy on board a merchant ship, which reveals a great deal about shipboard life in the early seventeenth century. Read More
Filed under: Mutiny & Discipline | Other (Early Modern) | Other (location)
Subjects include: Manpower & Life at Sea | Merchant Marines
Observational Methods and Procedures for the Mariner’s Astrolabe
The practical assessment of the accuracy of the mariner’s astrolabe has been the subject of discussion in The Mariner’s Mirror. This article gives further insight on this topic, based on period knowledge and statistical analysis of period and modern data. In addition, reference to more modern studies on this topic is given in an attempt to […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Early Modern) | Other (location)
Subjects include: Science & Exploration
The Royal Yacht Henrietta of 1679: Identification and Principal Dimensions
In 2012 the attention of the authors was drawn to a pen-and-ink drawing in the style of the Van de Veldes. This paper sets out to identify the subject of this drawing as the Henrietta yacht of 1679. It then proceeds to define the main dimensions of Henrietta and in particular that she was built with a more upright […] Read More
Filed under: Other (Early Modern) | East India Company | Internal Waterways
Subjects include: Art & Music | Shipbuilding & Design